'There has been a row; the Abbé hasn't made himself pleasant,' thought Madame Paloque. Then she followed Marthe as far as the Place de l'Archevêché, where she stopped and seemed to hesitate for a moment. At last, having glanced cautiously around to make sure that nobody was watching her, she stealthily slipped into the house where Abbé Fenil resided, at one of the corners of the Place.
Marthe now almost lived at Saint-Saturnin's. She carried out her religious duties with the greatest fervour. Even Abbé Faujas often had to remonstrate with her about her excessive zeal. He only allowed her to communicate once a month, fixed the hours which she should devote to pious exercises, and insisted that she should not entirely shut herself up in religious practices. She for a long time requested him to let her attend a low mass every morning before he would accede to her desire. One day, when she told him that she had lain for a whole hour on the cold floor of her room to punish herself for some fault she had committed, he was very angry with her, and declared that her confessor alone had the right to inflict penance. He treated her throughout very sternly, and threatened to send her back to Abbé Bourrette if she did not absolutely follow his directions.
'I was wrong to take you at all,' he often said; 'I do not like disobedient souls.'
She felt a pleasure in his harshness. That iron hand which bent her, and which held her back upon the edge of the adoration in the depths of which she would have liked to annihilate herself, thrilled her with ever-renewed desire. She remained like a neophyte, making but little advance in her journey of love, being constantly pulled up, and vaguely divining some yet greater bliss beyond. The sense of deep restfulness which she had first experienced in the church, that forgetfulness of herself and the outside world, now changed, however, into positive actual happiness. It was the happiness for which she had been vaguely longing since her girlhood, and which she was now, at forty years of age, at last finding; a happiness which sufficed her, which compensated her for all the past-away years, and made her egotistical, absorbed in the new sensations that she felt within her like sweet caresses.
'Be kind to me,' she murmured to Abbé Faujas, 'be kind to me, for I stand in need of great kindness.'
And when he did show her kindness, she could have gone down upon her knees and thanked him. At these times he unbent, spoke to her in a fatherly way, and pointed out to her that her imagination was too excited and feverish. God, said he, did not like to be worshipped in that way, in wild impulses. She smiled, looking quite pretty and young again with her blushing face, and promised to restrain herself in the future. But sometimes she experienced paroxysms of devotion, which cast her upon the flag-stones in some dark corner, where, almost grovelling, she stammered out burning words. Even her power of speech then died away, and she continued her prayers in feeling only, with a yearning of her whole being, an appeal for that divine kiss which seemed ever hovering about her brow without pressing it.
At home Marthe became querulous, she who till now had been indifferent and listless, quite happy so long as her husband left her at peace. Now, however, that he had begun to spend all his time in the house, had lost his old spirit of raillery, and had grown mopish and melancholy, she grew impatient with him.
'He is always hanging about us,' she said to the cook one day.
'Oh, he does it out of pure maliciousness,' replied Rose. 'He isn't a good man at heart. I haven't found that out to-day for the first time. He has only put on that woebegone look, he who is so fond of hearing his tongue wag, in order to try to make us pity him. He's really bursting with anger, but he won't show it, because he thinks that if he looks wretched we shall be sorry for him and do just what he wants. You are quite right, madame, not to let yourself be influenced by all those grimaces and pretences.'
Mouret kept a hold upon the women with his purse. He did not care to wrangle and argue with them, for fear of making his life still less comfortable than it already was; but, though he no longer grumbled and meddled and interfered, he showed his displeasure by refusing a single extra crown piece to either Marthe or Rose. He gave the latter a hundred francs a month for the purchase of provisions; wine, oil, and preserves were in the house. The cook was obliged to make the sum stated last her till the end of the month, even if she had to pay for something out of her own pocket. As for Marthe, she had absolutely nothing; her husband never even gave her a sou, and she was compelled to appeal to Rose, and ask her to try to save ten francs out of the monthly allowance. She often found herself without a pair of boots to put on, and was obliged to borrow from her mother the money she needed to buy either a dress or a hat.